Quote:
Originally Posted by 1487
Got to love Philly- people would rather have a vacant lot than new housing or retail that may attract more cars. Common sense should tell folks that the type of people likely to move into new apts at that site arent going to have cars.
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Well, I think we're nearing the tipping point where a lot of these gripes will ultimately become moot. Two reasons. One, people who live in Philadelphia for the urban experience are quickly outnumbering the old-timers who want to keep places like Penn Treaty Park as their quaint backyard. And two, newbies are driving up property values making vacant land along places like Delaware Avenue simply too valuable to remain unused.
It's good and bad. The bad, that land could become a suburban grocery store or stripmall, or some other ****-poor project with enough money to combat the NIMBYs (or in the case of Fishtown, the kind of ugly detraction they need to keep the "outsiders" from venturing north). The good, it means that these once-urban-now-quasi-suburban neighborhoods are becoming urban again. But more bad, they're also becoming pricy and losing a lot of the homegrown quirks that attracted new residents in the first place.
I guess I can see where some folks in Fishtown are coming from, but as a lover of all things urban, I can't bring myself to agree with it. It's a catch-22. And it's happened in Chicago, New York, Boston, and elsewhere.
Philadelphia's either going to continue evolving into a first-class city, which means it's going to be expensive and impersonal, or it's going to stagnate and remain what it always was...gritty and affordable, but uniquely charming for those of us weirdos who kind of liked it pre-Comcast. We're trending towards the former, and I'm okay with that even if it means I'll be pushed out of Center City.
It's very exciting to watch the city evolve and grow, and if Core can't build in Fishtown, by all means put those sexy apartment buildings in
my backyard along the Vine Street Expressway.
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